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I, and no doubt the entire nation (or maybe just the nation of those who blog and read blogs) breathlessly await .. no.. YEARN.. for Mr. Stephen Taylor, Blogging Tory head and organizer of anti-coalition marches and FB protest groups last year, to now admit that yes, CAPP has met his threshold that he arbitrarily set as his marker to make the group legit (in his eyes anyhow) as a legit expression of grasroots outrage/protest.

I somehow think I’m going to be disappointed waiting – I suspect the goalposts are going to be moved by him.

UPDATE a moment later: Ah.. I see it wasn’t long in that last prediction […]

If Maclean’s is going to give the most prominent Conservative supporting blogger in the country a forum at their site where he can spout his Conservative talking points off, how about they also give a Liberal blogger or a Progressive Blogger an opportunity to put out their point of view? […]

I congratulate Stephen Taylor for getting a gig at Macleans as a regular blogger. I do wonder though where the blogging counter-balance to Mr. Taylor’s presence on the Maclean’s roster is, now that they have promoted him and his blogposts to the same blogging section as where you find Coyne/Wells/O’Malley et al. Did the editorial board of Macleans just feel their blogging roster are a majority of “closet Liberals”, so they needed some “balance”, and decided to give Taylor a forum where he can publish his openly pro-Conservative blogging views?

Also.. I noted with amusement that they didn’t even say who Taylor was in his first blogpost. That raised the […]

Stephen Taylor came up with a post trying to claim because the Liberals have some social conservatives in their caucus (GASP! What a revelation!), somehow that makes the Liberals and Dion hypocrites on abortion. As Red Tory says:

Last time I checked, I donít believe there was any requirement for members to fall into lock-step with the leader on this controversial issue and itís fair to say that Dionís position is entirely representative of the vast majority of the caucus.

It’s rather interesting to me that one rather innocuous sounding statement from Dion in answer to 1 question on that issue (dealing with Bill C-484, Ken Epp’s private member’s bill) in the broader 66 minute town hall at Halton where most of the questions were on the Green Shift and the environment has sent certain Conservative supporters scurrying around either trying to attack Dion, or else reassuring their readers what Harper has said on the issue (which isn’t much, at least not about his personal views on the topic).

You’d think they were afraid of being painted as being out of touch with the majority of Canadian opinion or something.

I’m not going to get into a detailed synopsis of Stephen’s blogpiece like Red Tory did – more like a rant – but I’ll say more or less the same thing that RT did:

There’s nothing “emotional” amongst the “left-wing” about calling for due process to be followed and insisting that rules of evidence and constitutional rights to be respected.† I didn’t realize those concepts are alien and foreign to Conservatives, but apparently, thats the case. Quite frankly, it shouldn’t have anything to do with “left vs right”. If Conservatives claim they are for the rule of law, then they too should be calling for Khadr’s return to Canada, as Jonathan Kay just did in the National Post recently. Stephen claims to be a libertarian Conservative; I see no evidence of libertarianism in anything he’s written on the Khadr topic so far.

On a side-note, I also get a chuckle out of his article where he claims that conservatives act on what they know to be true. Right – their inactivity on global warming in the face of all scientific consensus – even to outright denunciation of those scientific facts – plus claiming that statistics showing crime going down isn’t right because they “feel” its a problem, shows real-time evidence on that, eh Stephen? Those are 2 examples I can use – among several others. That claim is laughable; I can only presume he put that line in there in order to make his Blogging Tory readership feel good about themselves.

The bottom line is this: we in Canada are the only Western country left in the world that refuses to repatriate its citizens from Guantanamo and still laughably claim that Khadr is being treated well and that the legal process down there is fair – this is still being claimed by the Conservative government and its supporters even after the US Supreme Court recently ruled otherwise. Harper and his bunch are being shown for what they are – Bush clones for their attempting to ignore constitutional rights and human rights.† I’ve no doubt if he thought he could get away with it, that Harper would be trying to set up military tribunals up here and remove Canadian constitutional protection from people accused of these offences – all in the name of national security. Their attitude with Guantanamo and more or less claiming they believe the tribunals down there could handle things better then the Canadian court system up here (in essence, being afraid Khadr would be found innocent) is direct evidence of that.

The only thing I can say for Stephen’s piece is he’s writing it mainly for his Conservative Kool-Aid crowd’s benefit. It befits a blog article on the Blogging Tory site – it would be insulting the intelligence of Canadians if it were appearing in a mainstream media newspaper article.

[email protected]:10 pm: Red Tory in a new blogpost goes after the specific arguments of Taylor against repatriating Omar Khadr.